Why Did the Oslo Accords Fail to Achieve Peace?
Israeli leaders never accepted the creation of an independent Palestinian state alongside Israel or a single state in all of Palestine/Israel with equality for both peoples.
Instead, Israel exploited the Oslo negotiations process to cement its control over the occupied territories. Israel retained direct control over most of the land; it no longer had to provide the services which an occupying power was required to provide for the occupied population.
Israel accelerated the expansion of illegal settlements on occupied Palestinian land to an unprecedented level on territory that was supposed to form the heart of a Palestinian state.
Israel began to impose increasingly severe restrictions on the movement of Palestinians, both within the occupied territories and between the territories and the outside world.
Israel accelerated its destruction of Palestinian homes and communities, mainly under the pretence they were built without approval from Israel, which was and remains nearly impossible for Palestinians to obtain.
The bilateral negotiations framework of Oslo exacerbated the considerable power imbalance between Israel, a nuclear-armed regional superpower backed by the U.S., and stateless, dispossessed Palestinians living under Israeli military occupation.
This imbalance was further reinforced by the failure of the U.S. to act as a fair mediator. Israel used these advantages to drag out negotiations to buy time to expand settlements and create “facts on the ground.”
Violent, right-wing Israeli extremists further undermined any possibility of the Oslo Accords leading to a lasting peace. In particular, the February 1994 massacre of 29 Palestinians as they prayed in occupied Hebron by a U.S.-born settler, which began a wave of violence that undermined support for negotiations on both sides and the assassination of Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin in November 1995 by a Jewish extremist opposed to any negotiations with the Palestinians or withdrawal from occupied Palestinian land.
Major Impacts of the Oslo Accords on the Ground
Most Palestinians experienced a deepening of Israel's control over their lives and land, with the PA acting as a subcontractor for Israel’s occupying army. The PA’s paramilitary police, which are armed and trained by the U.S., continue to work closely with the Israeli army to suppress political dissent and resistance to Israel’s occupation and apartheid system, with the PA leadership becoming increasingly authoritarian over time.
Under the terms of the Oslo Accords, the West Bank was divided into three separate areas: Area A, comprising 17% of the West Bank where most Palestinians live, is supposed to be under PA civilian and security control (under the overall control of the Israeli army); Area B, comprising 23% of the West Bank, is under PA civilian control and full Israeli military control; and Area C, comprising 60% of the West Bank where most settlements are located, is under full Israeli military and civilian control.
Between 1992 and 2000, Israel nearly doubled the number of Jewish settlers living illegally on occupied Palestinian land in the West Bank, from 100,500 to 190,206 and to 750,000 in 2023. During the same period, the number of settlers living in occupied East Jerusalem, the putative capital of a Palestinian state, increased from 141,000 to 267,230.
Israel began increasing restrictions on Palestinian movement within the occupied territories and between the occupied territories and the outside world, including a new permit system. At any given time, there are more than 500 physical barriers to Palestinian movement in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, including military checkpoints where Israeli soldiers routinely humiliate and harass Palestinians trying to cross. These restrictions - which Israeli settlers living illegally in the same territory are not subject to - cause tremendous hardships for Palestinians, preventing the sick from accessing medical care, students from going to school, farmers from reaching their land, obstructing commerce and business, and separating families and friends.
Israel built a ring of settlements and a wall around the expanded boundaries of occupied East Jerusalem, severing it from the West Bank, cementing Israeli control over the city and preventing most Palestinians on the outside from entering to worship, visit family and friends, do business, or study. Once a centre of religious, cultural and economic life for Palestinians in the West Bank, now most aren’t allowed to enter Jerusalem.
Israel separated Gaza from the West Bank and East Jerusalem, even though Oslo’s Declaration of Principles states “the two sides view the West Bank and Gaza as a single territorial unit,” and built an electrified fence around Gaza to keep people in. Since 2007, Israel has imposed a crippling siege and naval blockade on Palestinians in Gaza, which has been condemned as illegal by the UN and human rights organizations.
The downtown core of Hebron, the largest Palestinian city in the West Bank, was divided into two sections, one controlled by the PA (H1), and the other, where a few hundred radical Jewish settlers have implanted themselves, by the Israeli army (H2). As a result, the once bustling downtown core has become a ghost town, with Palestinian storefronts welded shut by the Israeli army. The main thoroughfare, Shuhada Street, has been dubbed “apartheid street” because Palestinians are forbidden from walking on it while Israeli settlers can use it freely.
Between 1993 and 2000, Israel destroyed almost 1,700 Palestinian homes in the occupied territories, according to the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions, mostly for being built without permission from Israel’s occupying army, which is nearly impossible for Palestinians to obtain. In the ensuing decades, Israel has destroyed thousands more Palestinian homes, farms, and businesses.
The economic arrangements set out under the Oslo Accords, particularly the Paris Protocol, and Israel’s restrictions on Palestinian movement and development first imposed under Oslo, have devastated the Palestinian economy, which has become largely dependent on international aid and the transfer of Palestinian tax money collected by Israel.
Elijah J. Magnier, war correspondent
Division of West Bank into zones of control was a recipe for the occupying power Israel to breakup the Palestinian presence into islands. It's also the period when Israel started their support of Hamas to undermine the PLO as a security guarantor, |
